


Those Days We Miss

by DawnsEternalLight



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Cuddles, Damian Wayne is Robin, Damian has complicated feelings about his family, Dick Grayson is Batman, Dick is doing his very best, Fights, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, I mean it's me, Kidnapping, argument, but it's complicated, especially his mom, he loves her, honestly I really wanted to write a hug, slight angst, there will be cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 21:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19117660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnsEternalLight/pseuds/DawnsEternalLight
Summary: After Damian picks a fight with Dick, he ends up kidnapped and pretty sure no one is going to come for him.





	Those Days We Miss

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a warm up that blossomed into something long enough to post. It's set during Dick's Batman run, sometime before Bruce is back from being lost in time, but after Talia's disowned Damian

It was Mother’s birthday.

It was well past noon when Damian realized it, carrying his sketchbook from his room to the elevator so he could work on the roof in the fresh air, looking out on the city. Richard was talking on the phone with someone, laughing at them that they had forgotten the day’s date.

“How could you forget?” he’d chuckled, “You’ve had it on your calendar forever.”

His grip on the pencil was so tight he heard it creak with menace. Even directed at a mystery person, the words were like daggers to Damian’s chest. It was Mother’s birthday and he had forgotten. He had allowed the date to slip to the back of his mind and disappear as if his whole life with her had been nothing but nightmares that pounced at night, threatening to drown him.

It had not been all that bad. It had _not_. Damian had good memories of that time. Like Mother’s birthday. It had been celebrated differently than Damian’s. She did not have a shadow for a father she battled to meet year to year.

No, she was daughter of the Demon’s Head, and her birth was celebrated as such. It was a day Damian was released from lessons early. A day he was allowed to spend close to her side, enjoying foods and most of all her presence.

Damian wondered who would sit by her now that he had been disowned. Had she completed the clone replacement of him? Or had she plucked another lost battle scarred child like Todd to dote on? Perhaps she was alone, gazing out at her kingdom.

“Dames? You alright?” his brother had finished his phone call, and was looking at Damian, brows knit.

“Fine.” Damian said, brushing off the look of concern on his brother’s face.

He had not realized he’d stopped in the middle of the room, or stood still long enough to garner Richard’s focus, “If I have your attention at last, I am heading out.”

The decision was impulsive. He suddenly did not want to be in the penthouse or Wayne Tower at all. He wanted to be away, somewhere he did not feel like his life was in two parts.

Richard frowned at him, “The middle of the day or not, it’s not exactly safe for a kid to wander the city by himself.”

“Tt. I am not a child, nor am I going to ‘wander’. I am going to the park to draw. Obviously.” he indicated his sketchbook.

“Still, Damian. I can’t let you go somewhere on your own. You’re my responsibility and--”

“I did not ask to be your responsibility.” Damian spat, the words digging at him. It was too much like Mother. Too much like Damian was here because Richard owed someone something. “Nor do I require your guardianship every moment of my life. I was raised with assassins.”

“Assassins or not, Gotham is different. You might not think it, but you are a kid, and you’re a Wayne, if you go out on your own you’re putting a target on your back. Give me half an hour and I”ll--”

“I do not need your pity.” Damian snapped, anger bubbling up inside him, bursting almost from nowhere, “Neither do I need your protection. In fact, I do not need you. I survived travelling to Gotham by myself, through dangerous lands just fine. I can manage an afternoon at the park.”

“I don’t care where you’ve been, you’re a kid in a dangerous--”

“Stop calling me a child!” Damian yelled, deciding to push, if Richard was going to sound like his mother then perhaps he would react as she did as well, “I am more capable than any child, I have survived things grown men could not. I will not allow one of my father’s foundlings to stop me from doing as I please.”

Richard look as if he were struck. It made guilt pool in Damian’s stomach, replacing his anger and irritation temporarily. Then his brother’s face turned stormy, his eyes dark.

“Fine.” he waved Damian off with a dismissive hand, “You want to go out on your own, Mr. Capable? Go ahead, no one’s stopping you.”

It was not the response Damian had wanted. Richard did not lash out verbally nor physically as he had expected. He was angry, his tone brimming with it, but his reaction was still not what Damian had seen in the past. It was nothing like Mother or one of his teachers would have done.

Damian had thought he’d stopped expecting that reaction from Richard, the man had told him often enough that he was not Mother. He would not hurt or cast Damian out for getting angry. Damian knew this, but somehow the lack of it felt like a hole.

He spun on his heel and stormed from the room and building.

Damian did not even make it to the park before a man bumped into him.

“Sorry.” the man said, hands on Damian’s shoulders, “I wasn’t looking.”

He stumbled again, pulling Damian with him, and they staggered into a dark alley. Damian pushed at the man, irritated. Instead of letting him go, Damian was pressed close to his chest, so tight he couldn’t breathe, and a hand hit the back of his head at the spot where his neck met scalp, sharp and precise enough to send Damian’s vision black.

* * *

Damian woke up in a dim closet. The single bulb above him revealed shelves filled with cardboard boxes of supplies, bags of workman's gloves, and lines of fluorescent bulbs stacked in a corner. It smelled of rubber and dust, and tickled at his nose.

Damian was laying on the floor, hands bound behind his back, face pressed into the dirt where he’d been dumped carelessly. He wiggled his way into a sitting position and sat there. Hours went by without so much as a hint of why or where he had been taken. He’d sat and stewed in his own idiocy long enough that the ropes had begun to chafe against his wrists.

The chafing was not the worst of it, even if it was currently the most annoying thing bugging him. The worst of it was that Damian was sure no one was coming for him. Richard believed him to be at the park, and even if he were clued into Damian’s circumstances he was furious with him.

Not that Damian blamed him. He shifted his wrists as much as he could in the bindings, then stretched and bent his fingers in an attempt to stave off the pins and needles that from long term stillness. Damian could not get Richard’s face out of his head. Could not stop picturing the struck, upset look in his eyes.

He had yelled at Richard. Over nothing. Yelled because his chest hurt and he missed his _mother_. The mother who had disowned him. The mother whose attentions paled in comparison to even a single moment of care Richard had showered upon Damian.

He curled his toes in his shoes and scooted his feet a little closer to him so he could let his head drop against his knees. He squeezed his eyes closed against the pressure in his chest.

“I don’t need you.” He’d yelled. “I did good enough by myself.” He had claimed.

Damian released a bitter laugh, yes he had done so well running terrified from Grandfather’s men, running to his father’s home. That was the only time Damian was certain he had been really on his own. And he had been on the run, searching for help. He had not done ‘well’ on his own. Nowhere near.

Even if he was more capable of dealing with people now than he had been it was not of his own doing. Richard had taught him much in the time they had been together. If Damian could ‘do well on his own’ it was only due to his brother.

Damian sucked air in, trying to use breathing to push down the cold pain in his chest.

A hand, large and callused grabbed Damian by his hair, yanking him up, he yelped, stumbling to his feet. He had not even heard the door open.

“Crying for your rich father?” the man grinned, revealing a missing canine, Damian wished he’d been the one to knock the tooth out. He hadn’t even struggled, so confused he was by the fool.

“Save the tears for the phone call. A well place sob can help me wring an extra thousand or so outta your dad.”

Damian bared his teeth at him, “I could have a million dollars in my pocket and you would not leave here with a penny.”

“Right.” The man said, “All you rich brats think someone’s gonna save you before anything bad happens.”

He jerked Damian forward, hand still tangled in his hair. Damian bit back a yell, and blinked back tears at the sharp pain. He rushed to keep up with the man so he would not risk hair tearing from his scalp. It was difficult, his hands tied behind his back making his balance iffy at best.

He was dragged from the small storage room he’d been kept in, to a more open space. He was in a small factory. The walls were bare brick, nothing between them and the outside of the building. Damian was dumped into a chair, in one of the corners by a desk and landline set into the wall.

“Move and you’ll regret it.” The man told him, pressing Damian back into it so hard the rungs dug into his arms, uncomfortably squished behind him. If he was calling from the building it explained him dragging Damian out here instead of shoving a phone to his ear in the closet. He tried not to grin, a landline should be easy to track.

“You want to go out on your own, Mr. Capable? Go ahead, no one’s stopping you.” the memory of Richard’s angry voice came back to Damian’s mind, wiping away all desire to smile. Landline or not, no one would bother tracking it. Damian had made sure of that.

Normally, Damian would not doubt Richard’s coming for him. In the beginning he would have. When he had not known his brother. When everything had felt like a test. Like the smallest of failures would be catastrophic and destroy the tenuous string holding him to his father’s family.

He felt now that those old worries were foolish. Richard was not someone to punish Damian for messing up within human nature. He was patient and kind in most situations.

The Richard who had finally snapped at Damian had been someone Damian had pushed and pushed for no reason. Someone he’d insulted. Someone he had done all he could to drive away out of what must seem to Richard to be insanity. What other reason did he have to gauge Damian’s actions today by? He would not come after a child who had finally cracked.

He should have said something when he realized the day.

Richard would not judge Damian for missing his mother, even if he got that look every time Damian mentioned her. The look that said he’d like to return to her all the pain she’d caused Damian over the years. All the pain Damian had caused for himself, the pain he’d earned.

He shook his head, Richard said he had not earned that. He was not supposed to look at his punishments that way anymore. This however? Damian had walked right into earning.

He could hear the line ringing as the man phoned Damian’s family. The deep ring of each an announcement of “Look at how, Damian has messed up again, see how he’s proved how incapable he really is.”

It rang and rang until it clicked. Damian strained, but could not hear a voice on the other end. The man slammed the receiver back against its place on the wall. He spun on Damian, “Where are they?” he growled.

No one had picked up. It felt like a stone had been dropped into his stomach, churning everything inside to a sickening mess. Even if he had called the manor, Pennyworth had set the line up to direct to the penthouse so they would not miss any communications. If they had not picked up it was on purpose.

“Perhaps no one was close to the phone.” Damian suggested, more for himself than the man’s comfort. Pennyworth could have been in the shower. Richard listening to music at a high level.

The man turned again, lifting the phone with as much anger as he’d slammed it down with, stabbing each number before waiting on the line to connect. Damian held his breath as he heard the ringing begin again. His heart hammered out a ‘please pick up, please pick up’ mantra against his chest.

The green plastic of the phone cracked as the man broke it against the wall again. He turned and dragged Damian up from the chair by his shirt, “You left Wayne Tower. You’re his newest brat.” the words were a growl, a statement and not a question.

The man had been staking the place out. Probably waiting for Damian or Richard, or even Drake to leave by themselves. He’d been a fool not to listen to his brother. He was no safer a Wayne than he’d been an Al Ghul.

The man turned Damian, slamming him into the wall next to the broken phone, his breath whooshing out of him as his back made bruising contact with the wall. The rough of the brick scratched against his bare arms painfully.

“Why aren’t they picking up?” he growled, Damian locked onto the missing tooth, watching the way the pink of his tongue sometimes flashed behind the hole.

“I don’t know.” he wheezed, his mind scrambling for a way out.

He’d played good hostage long enough, too long at this point, he wanted out of here and away from this deteriorating situation. The man might be an imbecile for jumping so quickly to violence, but he’d been prepared up until now, including in his knot tying. The ropes holding Damian’s wrists behind his back only seemed to get tighter as he attempted to get them off.

Damian was yanked back and shoved against the wall again, his head bouncing against the bricks. Dots scattered across his vision, and Damian heard rushing in his ears. This was bad. No one was picking up. No one wanted him. No one but this psycho.

“Where did they go? Were you followed?”

“No.” Damian said, blinking away the spots, “They were mad at me. We fought.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

A fist slammed into Damian’s stomach. The spots were back in his vision, his breath gone again. Damian felt his knuckles break against the brick as the impact from the blow pushed them further into the wall.

“You all were onto me weren’t you? Caught onto my watching?”

“N-no.” Damian managed before he was dropped to the ground. He tried to scramble away and moved right into a boot kicking at his bruised stomach again.

The boot kicked a second time, flipping Damian into the wall, and pressing into his chest. He couldn’t breathe for the pressure.

“You were setting up a trap weren’t you? What’d you do let yourself get kidnapped to get the bad man?” he grinned at Damian, venom dripping from his words.

Damian couldn’t help but laugh, if only. He wondered if Richard had known. If he’d allowed Damian to leave just to walk into a trap. Mother would have. A lesson. She’d say. One of many. One could not survive if they were not constantly aware of their surroundings.

Richard wouldn’t. He wouldn’t allow Damian to walk into danger, no matter how he had goaded him. His traitorous mind reminded him that Richard had not bothered to pick up the phone for the ransom call either. Damian had been away long enough, he had to have been. Richard must know something was wrong right?

More than anything, Damian wished for him to have realized it. To have accidentally missed both calls.

“Are you laughing at me? You snot nosed _brat_.” The boot crushed his chest, squeezing the last of Damian’s air out in a pained whine.

His vision started to go spotty before the foot released its pressure. Damian hardly had a chance to suck in air before the boot came crashing back down towards him again, in a wild arc.

Damian curled to try and protect himself, making the kick glance off his forehead, it’d lump like he’d been hit with a rock, and bruise nastily, but at least the blow hadn’t been solid. The one after that was aimed better, bruising against Damian’s raised knees.

Damian pulled his legs in tighter, pressing his face close to his chest and squeezing his eyes shut, trying to protect himself. He wanted to go home. He didn’t want to die here, didn’t want to be beat to a pulp by a man gone insane by a city Damian should have listened about. He wanted to say sorry and curl next to Richard on the couch and tell him about Mother. He wanted-- He just wanted his brother.

The man was yelling about something, spittle raining down on Damian as he raged. He grabbed Damian by the hair again, jerking him up against the wall. The pressure dug the ridged edges of the brick into his arms, scratching deeper than before.

Then Damian was tumbling to the ground again, the dark shadow over him pulled away with sudden force. Damian blinked in surprise, seeing Batman throwing the kidnapper away from Damian, and into the small desk they’d been beside.

Batman’s fists rained down on the man’s face, bloodying it in a moment before he was left, limp against the desk. Richard ziptied the man’s wrist to a bar on the table and turned to Damian.

He knelt in front of him, hands gentle as he helped Damian sit up, and kept his voice soft as he said, “Hey, Sweetest. Give me a second and I’ll have you loose.”

Damian tried to ignore the warm way his chest felt at the name, a promise that he had not tarnished himself completely in his brother’s eyes. Richard leaned him forward to cut through the ropes. He cupped Damian’s chin to tilt his head up, then over, a deep frown on his face.

“Sorry.” Damian whispered.

The frown softened, and his hand slipped up, thumb brushing at the already swelling welt on Damian’s forehead, “You were gone by the time I got downstairs.”

Damian leaned forward into Richard’s chest, his own tight. He knew his face was red, he could feel the way his cheeks had warmed, and the pressure of tears behind his eyes already stuffing his nose.

Arms wrapped around him, lifting him from the ground to tuck him close. Damian curled into the hold, sniffling.

“I lost my sketchbook.” he murmured as they moved outside.

“It was on the ground in the alley.” Richard answered, “It’s safe at home for you.”

Damian pressed his face closer to the Batsymbol, “Thanks.”

Richard had not even bothered to park far away from the factory. The Batmobile sat out front, waiting to take them home.

“You came right after me?” Damian asked, after they were both in the car and moving back to the penthouse.

“Ten minutes.” Richard said, “I thought I’d find you calmer at the park.”

Damian folded himself into his seat, wincing against the pain in his chest. Richard had been out looking for him, that’s why he hadn’t picked up. Pennyworth had probably had his own places to search. No one had been home, because they were looking for Damian.

They sat in silence for the rest of the drive and most of Richard’s ministrations. Damian was clean, given pain killers, and mostly wrapped up before he managed another attempt at apology.

“You were right.” Damian mumbled, as Richard was bandaging the broken skin of his knuckles.

“I’m sorry I was.” Richard’s voice was earnest.

Damian had been foolish to assume the man wouldn’t have wanted him. To have let himself think Richard would have set the trap up for him or allowed him to walk into danger unknowing. To have thought any of the terrible things he had.

“I do need you.” Damian said, making Richard’s head jerk up in surprise as he finished the binding, “Perhaps not every second of every day, but I am happy to have you as my partner.”

Richard smiled gently at him and held his arms out. Damian leaned forward and wrapped his arms around his brother’s neck, letting himself be carried again. He believed they were at the point he could indulge in being carried. It soothed the cold ache in his chest. That strange hole he hadn’t been able to figure out.

He tucked his head under Richard’s chin, “Might we sit before bed? I wish to speak with you about something.”

A kiss dropped into his hair, “Of course.”

Damian nodded against Richard’s soft sweatshirt, and let himself rest as they moved. There’d be time for better apologies and explanations when they got upstairs. For now, he was happy to be held and safe and warm.


End file.
